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Tuesday, 15 October 2013

Bards - Hurrumpf

Whenever I think of Bards in RPG games I am drawn to a mental image of a design meeting in TSR. I see in my mind that there was an argument about new character classes and that for some reason they wanted a set number and were struggling for a final class. The argument about including monks had gone on for hours. I mean it's a largely western setting why not have the odd shaolin style monk drop in, I mean look how popular the TV series Kung Fu is.

Why harps?

After this vicious debate people had lost the will to fight so the bard character class got in. I suspect there was a similar meeting about character races where the team got bored and decided that they would let gnomes in. Something along the lines of Tunnels and Troll has faeries and leprechauns so why not. I see and "oh well what the hell, it's time for my coffee break" moment happening for both. The next thing I think about bards is that scene from "The gamers:
Dorkness Rising" where there is a huge pile of dead bards. The pile is
created from weak, stupid bards. The scene makes me feel kind of warm
inside. Suffering bards are cool.

Bard with attitude

You may have got the idea by now that I don't like the character class. Sadly I am running a Viking themed game so bards really are part of the background so I kind of feel a duty to use them. So I got some from Gripping Beast. I am now ever less impressed as the one with the blue tabard looks like one of my PE teachers. They all seem to have a larp feel to them.

This is another point, bards in contemporary culture (maybe not fantasy literature) are mostly figures of fun. Cacofonix being a figure in point. I guess it's the same for me with Barbarian's since reading Thrudd years ago in WD (when it was a real magazine (just like Peter Pan was once a real boy)) the archetype is broken for tabletop RPG because people snigger too loudly. :)

Orpheus, Taliesin, Bragi, Scheherazade... heroic bards are in the ancient literature of most cultures. Even Fafhrd had some bardic training -- and you know Gary Gygax loved the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. They're one of my favorite character types, although most editions of D&D have made them kind of weak.

What D+D offers is a kind of skaldic bard which has been turned into something else. It isn't really anything like something that existed or created in pre D+D literature. Druids and monks are the same. They are very specific genre characters who may work as NPCs in mainstream D+D but seem to fall on the backside as player characters. They normally become under powered or in the case of monks (sometimes) very over powered.

I have developed a dislike for D+D over the years which could now almost be described as a mental health condition. Why? Largely because it has been turned into something that it was never meant to be by people who wanted to make money. I wonder what Gygax really felt about what had happened to his offspring.It's Taliesin and Bragi that I am hoping to shoot for in my game (which is probably going to be Savage Worlds). Being a bard brings respect and a warm welcome (but no enchanting magical melodies). Bards would always be welcomed near the Jarl's table who would no doubt be after a song or two to be written about them.Gary Gygax did wonderful things for roleplaying but TSR didn't do much to improve the reputation of bards over the years. Bragi may be what being a bard was all about but Flinn the Fine has become what bards are in modern roleplaying. This is a bad thing :(Read your blog by the way and +1'd it